From the Guardian: Village skull finds deepen mystery of roundheads.

A long-standing mystery over the way men’s skulls changed from long to round in medieval Europe has been deepened by discoveries at a Yorkshire village.

Huge volumes of data collected at Wharram Percy cast doubt on all current theories about the unexplained blip between the 11th and 13th centuries which has been recorded by archaeologists across the continent.

Immigration and climate change have been the two main hypotheses but neither makes sense of the 700 Yorkshire skeletons. They are expected to cause widespread revision of the period’s history, as the first large-scale find from a single, accurately-dated indigenous community.

The leading theory, that Scandinavian incomers brought new racial characteristics to the rest of Europe, does not make sense at Wharram, a lonely valley in the Wolds near Malton. Its natural isolation was reinforced during the 200 years of the skull change by plague and sheep blight which soon after led to its abandonment.

The skulls also show that [continue]